"My mother wants three cents' worth of vegetable soup."

"And mine wants enough beef stew for three of us."

Two battered tin pails were handed up by small, grimy fingers. Two
eager little faces were upturned toward the top of the bright green
counter which loomed before them. Two pairs of roguish eyes smiled
back at the woman who reached over the counter and took the pails.

"The beef stew will be twelve cents," she said. "It is four cents
for each half pint, you know."

"I know," answered the youth. "My mother says when she has to buy
the meat and all and cook it and put a quarter in the gas meter,
it's cheaper to get it here. My father got his breakfast here, too,
and it only cost him five cents."

"And was he pleased?" asked the woman, carefully lowering the filled
pail to the outstretched little hand.

"You bet," chuckled the lad, as he turned and followed the little
procession down the length of the room and out through the door on
the opposite side.

The woman was Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, jr.

The boy was the son of a 'longshoreman living on "Death Avenue," in
close proximity to the newly established People's Kitchen, situated
on the southeast corner of Tenth Avenue and West Twenty-seventh
Street, New York.